STALKER dev re-opens for business

The original developer of the STALKER series, GSC Gameworld, has made a return to the games industry and is working on its first new project.

Talking to Gamesindustry.biz, original GSC team member Valentine Yeltyshev confirmed the studio’s return and that they are confident that fans of their games will help them achieve success in the market.

Yeltyshev stated that the game the studio has a full team for the its new project and that it is currently working on is an ‘old-fashioned, full price game’ as opposed to anything adopting a more modern free-to-play model.

’The market we’re in is quite old fashioned, they’re not 16 year olds, they’re 25-40 years old,’[i] said Yeltyshev. [i]’We don’t think free-to-play is the right model for the game we want to make.’

GSC Gameworld wound down and closed its doors in 2011 due to a mix of financial complications and a personal decision by the studio's chief executive. When the studio was shut down, STALKER 2 was being developed.

The legacy of STALKER development has been muddled recently with West Games, the team behind the Areal Kickstarter project purporting to be a spiritual successor to STALKER, claiming that they were the original STALKER team. Yeltyshev explains that the West Games team were in fact working on an unfinished browser based flash game based in the STALKER universe.

’When they promoted themselves as having worked on STALKER, I was quite surprised,’ added Yeltyshev. ’We would definitely win the legal action against them, but we won't start it.’

STALKER was released in 2007 and is a cult favourite owing to its harsh unforgiving world. The game spawned two standalone expansions with STALKER: Clear Sky and STALKER: Call of Pripyat.